Wetwang: A Chariot Fit for a Queen?

Page 9 of 10

• 1. Chariot, cart or carriage?
• 2. British chariots
• 3. The evidence
• 4. What is a chariot?
• 5. Mobile missile platforms
• 6. Vehicle of war
• 7. Iron Age suspension
• 8. Building the chariot
• 9. Field trials
• 10. Conclusion
• Print entire article

Field trials

The day of the field trials was a day of some tension as the present author had had a near disastrous experience driving a reconstructed Egyptian chariot some years earlier.

The team wanted to do these trials properly, so trained their horses to perform under Iron Age conditions. Would it all work?

'Without traces a vehicle can easily become destabilised ...'

Before the 5th century AD, when the Chinese invented the rigid collar and trace system of harnessing still in use today, horses were harnessed by a simple yoke. A principal problem of the yoke-only system is that there are no ‘traces’. These are leather straps which attach from collar to vehicle and are the means by which it is pulled.

Without traces a vehicle can easily become destabilised - and no one wanted that to happen, so the horses were drilled with care.

The team also wanted to experiment with using a bearing rein with the fifth terret - this is a rein which runs from the inside of each horse’s bit, back via a central terret. By adjusting the length of this they could affect the carriage (or bearing) of the horses’ heads - this had a direct impact on keeping them on a straight path.

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Published: 2005-01-25